Sermons & Meditations

Matthew 2:13-15, 19-23; Ephesians 1:3-14
Presented January 1, 2012, by Joel Kline
The First Sunday after Christmas

In one of her Advent sermons my friend and colleague in ministry, Christy Waltersdorff, pastor of York Center Church of the Brethren, related the remarkable story of recent Nobel Peace Prize winner Leymah Gbowee. As an eighteen-year-old in 1990 Leymah, along with some one thousand other persons, found herself hiding in her church in Monrovia, Liberia—St. Peter’s Lutheran Church—waiting for the worst to happen. It was during the civil war between the Liberian government and rebel forces led by the infamous and brutal Charles Taylor. On July 28 of that year Leymah’s uncle rescued her and her family from the church by lying about their tribal identity to the soldiers guarding the church compound. The very next day, July 29, government forces attacked the church building, and after raping and killing the woman who held the church keys, the soldiers slaughtered more than 500 men, women, and children with machine guns, machetes, and knives.

For the next ten years the traumatized Leymah wandered from Sierra Leone to Ghana and back to Liberia, along the way becoming involved in an abusive relationship and giving birth to four children. Finally Leymah moved back to Monrovia with her parents, and by that time her adolescent dreams of medical school had long since vanished. Leymah found a job as a social worker helping women and children devastated both physically and emotionally by the years of warfare, and while there encountered a Lutheran pastor who challenged her to think for herself and who introduced her to the writings of Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., Kenyan peace activist Hiskias Assefa, and Mennonite author John Howard Yoder. Leymah was especially struck by Gandhi’s assertion that violence and tyranny will never finally succeed. “In the end,” wrote Gandhi, “they always fail. Think of it: always.”

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Isaiah 52:7-10; Luke 2:1-20
Presented December 25, 2011, by Joel Kline
Christmas Sunday

Some years ago I came across the tale of a young man who dreamed of holding an unlit candle in his hand, while becoming aware that Jesus stood nearby, holding a glowing candelabra. The young man moved forward so that Jesus might light his candle from the candelabra, but as the young man moved off into the darkness, eager to share new light, his own breath blew out the candle’s flame.

Turning back, the young man observed Jesus still standing where he was, holding the flaming candelabra. The young man slowly returned, hesitantly holding out his candle a second time. Jesus offered no blame or reproach, but simply relit the young man’s candle.

Again the young man started off, but again, the flame flickered and was blown out by the force of the young man’s breath. Once again he looked back, now definitely expecting some reproach, but no sign of rebuke followed. Instead, Jesus once more lit the extinguished candle. And again, the young man ventured forth.

The pattern continued to be repeated, but the young man eventually noticed one thing. Each time he was able to journey just a bit farther before losing the flame. With a lighter and more joyful heart, he would return repeatedly to the source of light, each time venturing anew into the darkness with a lighted candle. Along the way, the young man began to realize that the life of faith involves a continual returning to the source, the spring, the foundation point of our living—and that grace-filled source is Jesus the Christ, the One about whom the Gospel writer testifies, “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness does not overcome the light” (John 1:5).

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2 Samuel 7:1-16: Luke 1:26-38
Presented December 18, 2011, by Joel Kline
The Fourth Sunday of Advent

There is an old legend in the Jewish Talmud which tells of one of the rabbis having opportunity to ask Elijah the prophet when the Messiah will come. Elijah’s response? “Go and ask him yourself.” “But where is he?” counters the rabbi. “Sitting at the gates of the city,” asserts the ancient prophet. That response leads the rabbi to ask one more question: “How shall I know him?” Responds Elijah, “He is sitting among the poor covered with wounds. The others unbind all their wounds at the same time and then bind them up again. But he unbinds one at a time and binds it up again, saying to himself, ‘Perhaps I shall be needed: if so I must always be ready so as not to delay for a moment.’”

After sharing this ancient legend Henri Nouwen raises a number of significant questions: Why would the Messiah be found outside the gates of the city? Why is he sitting among the poor, and why is he covered with wounds? Even more, why is he changing the bandages on those wounds—others’ and his own—one at a time?

It’s not an image of the Messiah to which we are readily drawn, is it? And yet, among the varied images with which the Hebrew Scriptures portray the coming Messiah stands this picture of a suffering servant and a wounded healer, one whose place is indeed found on the edges of life among the poor, tending to his own wounds as well as the wounds of others, all in anticipation of the moment when he will be most needed. The 53rd chapter of Isaiah, you will remember, speaks of the Coming One as “a man of suffering and acquainted with infirmity,” one who was “oppressed” and “afflicted,” one who “was wounded for our transgressions,” “despised and rejected by others” (Isaiah 53:3-7).

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Isaiah 64:1-9; Mark 13:24-37
Presented November 27, 2011, by Joel Kline
The First Sunday of Advent

Early on in my experience as a pastor, I struggled a great deal with my own sense of calling. Is the pastoral ministry the right “fit” for me, I frequently wondered, particularly since I found myself frustrated and impatient with the disparity that all too often exists between what the church proclaims and how that same church acts. The questions have never fully disappeared—indeed, I suspect they never should!—but I did begin to recognize how important it was for me to look inwardly, to examine the inconsistencies in my own life before investing so much energy lamenting any disparity I noted in the lives of others and in the church community. In other words, I had my own work to do, and in response, I began to develop a set of spiritual disciplines, meeting regularly with a spiritual director or guide through the years and creating intentional times for prayer and meditation and journaling—times for honest confession of my own shortcomings and brokenness every bit as much as those yearnings deep within me for healing and wholeness in the world around me, for a deepening taste of justice and compassion, peace and new life.

During those beginning years of ministry I recall hearing a fellow pastor talking about the hymnody of the church, pointing out how we perhaps overstate and “over-sing” the commitments we make to our faith. You will remember the familiar hymn that begins, “Take my life and let it be consecrated, Lord, to thee.”  In one of the stanzas we sing, “Take my silver and my gold; not a mite would I withhold.” Even now, every time I hear or read or sing those words, I have to stop and ask myself, “Really? As one living in the midst of a materialistic culture that assigns personal value in terms of how much we earn and possess, can I honestly claim that I am willing to place everything that I own in the hands of God?”

In the haunting Advent hymn we sang as worship began this morning, O Come, O Come, Immanuel, we pray the prayer, O come, desire of nations, bind all peoples in one heart and mind. Bid envy, strife, and quarrel cease. Fill the whole world with heaven’s peace. Again, I find myself needing to ask, “Is this a prayer I can freely make my own? How willingly do I let go of the envy and the quarreling and the strife buried deep in my own heart and soul; am I able to cast aside those yearnings for success and status and recognition that may well keep me from respecting and honoring the gifts of others; am I willing to take on the heart of a servant, setting aside my own pursuits when necessary to help bring about a deepening peace and unity to human life?”

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Genesis 28:10-22
Presented November 13, 2011, by Joel Kline
The Twenty-Second Sunday after Pentecost
Progressive Brethren Gathering

Perhaps you remember the Dr. Seuss book, And to Think I Saw it on Mulberry Street. It’s the delightful tale of a little boy who, while walking home, “sees” a wonderful circus parade coming down the street. When he reaches home, the youngster enthusiastically describes what he has seen to his father in vivid detail. The father, however, is skeptical, repeatedly questioning his son, “What really happened on Mulberry Street?” The story is continually eroded until the boy finally acknowledges that what he actually saw on Mulberry Street was a “plain horse and wagon.”

At one level And to Think I Saw It on Mulberry Street is a fun and delightful Dr. Seuss story, yet at another level it points to one of our culture’s biases, a suspicion of the imagination, a tendency to look with dismay upon anything but the most concrete and most visible. It’s a perspective that makes faith difficult for many in our day, for the very essence of faith demands an ability to look beyond ourselves, to envision something greater than we are, to trust—all appearances to the contrary—that a new world is unfolding. A new world is in the works.

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